


a legend of dust or gold

by xerampelinae



Series: the hope suite [4]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Marriage of Convenience, Timestamp: Hoth, Universe Alteration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-09
Updated: 2017-10-09
Packaged: 2019-01-15 03:16:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12312696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xerampelinae/pseuds/xerampelinae
Summary: “Milord,” Bodhi will say over breakfast.“Bodhi,” Jyn will return with some suspicion. A sip of caf and Jyn will realize that a curious new recruit will ask what's going on. And eyes shining, Bodhi will explain that the Rebel Alliance’s secrets include the origins of Captain Andor’s wife, you know who I'm talking about--the humanoid instructor with the best cross-species grappling and a ferocity inverse to her size--whom the fearsome Darth Vader refused to train, for fear of being displaced from his position as successor to the Emperor.AKA, Darth Wampa: The Rise





	a legend of dust or gold

“I hear there's this creature on Hoth,” Bodhi says, “scares all those tauntaun they found there. Comes in the night and eats from the herd.”

“What is this creature called,” Chirrut asks, tone mirthful. Baze twitches with suspicion. 

“Wampa,” Bodhi says.

“Usually we call her Jyn,” Chirrut says. 

“What?” Jyn says. She's heard Cassian respond that way too often.

-

Darth Wampa is Cassian’s creation. The long of the short of it is that Cassian gets hurt, not even on a mission but on-base, and Jyn doesn’t find out until K2 wonders aloud where she is, citing some Alliance Regulation necessitating spousal notification of injury in and out of combat zoning. 

Draven happens to snark something about finding warmer crevasses on Hoth than in Jyn’s heart in her wrathful wake as she goes to retrieve clothing undamaged by blasterfire. 

Cassian is the one who druggedly announces his own wife as Darth Wampa, who would be Vader’s protege if he stooped low enough to discover Hoth; the benefit of this statement is that Draven is sufficiently discomfited to depart. Herself, Jyn is wordless. 

-

Bodhi is the one who picks it up and _sprints_ with it. Which, well, Jyn has always had a soft spot for him. He's the only thing she chose to bring with her when she left the Partisans.

“Milord,” Bodhi will say over breakfast. 

“Bodhi,” Jyn will return with some suspicion. A sip of caf and Jyn will realize that a curious new recruit will ask what's going on. And eyes shining, Bodhi will explain that the Rebel Alliance’s secrets include the origins of Captain Andor’s wife, you know who I'm talking about--the humanoid instructor with the best cross-species grappling and a ferocity inverse to her size--whom the fearsome Darth Vader refused to train, for fear of being displaced from his position as successor to the Emperor.

Captain Andor met his wife on a confidential mission on behalf of the Alliance, Bodhi will say earnestly. The details are, of course classified, but it was a moment of immediate understanding when they did meet.

Or, Bodhi might say, Milord Wampa had set out to locate a spy, an assassin moving through Imperial officers of a certain tier. They had met in the middle of a firefight between Andor and his target; Darth Wampa had watched and purposefully taken aim. The officer fell, and Andor made Captain on Wampa’s defection.

A listener might then ask, where had Bodhi and the rest of Rogue One come into the picture? 

Bodhi had been Milord Wampa’s pilot and defected alongside her, he'd say. The Guardians were a different story, guided by the Force. They had come together to fight the Empire.

That, Bodhi says, sincerity simulated, is a story for another day. 

-

The worst of Darth Wampa’s legacy comes in the days after Luke is recovered from the frozen wastes of Hoth and has finished his extended bacta soak; enough time passes that the Alliance is less petrified of upsetting Luke and inciting Leia’s protective wrath over the whole traumatic injury incident. Jyn asks Luke how he’s doing--less about the injury and more about the way he looks like his core temperature is low and Luke looks like he’s an extended blink away from a hypothermic decline into never waking up again--and when he fails to respond, orders K2 to perform a thermal scan.

“I’m fine, Milord Wampa,” Luke says muzzily, as K2 notes levelly that Luke’s temperature is descending from suboptimal homeostasis. Then Jyn is chivvying Luke out of the room, Bodhi at their heels.

-

Jyn realizes what Luke had said about an hour into the Leia-Luke-Chewbacca snuggle cycle. The worst of it, she thinks, is that not only has Darth Wampa has not only become normalized but accepted.

-

It gets worse, however, after the whole hand incident. Luke has yet to be re-handed and there’s a long night where no one wants to face the words and faces of their dreams yet, least of all Luke. 

They promise each other different things: Leia her parents, their home back on Alderaan, and Naboo; Chirrut the song of the kyber sitting in stone and in lightsabers; Baze a life lived parallel to those you cannot live without; Bodhi the co-pilot’s chair and the open spread of the galaxy before them; Cassian the breadth of his watch; K2 his ordered support in place of Luke’s wayward appendage; Jyn, last of all, herself as Luke’s new father.

“I grew up without my parents,” Jyn says, “so. If you have to have a Sith Lord for a father, why not choose Darth Wampa?”

“I get to choose?” Luke asks, muzzily. Bodhi bobs at his shoulder, bumping it. “I--yes, milord.”

They laugh together on this lonesome, aching night for a legend that may come to dust or to gold, for it is their own.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Fall Out Boy's Centuries, "Some legends are told/Some turn to dust or to gold/But you will remember me/Remember me, for centuries."  
> Random irony: like Luke getting his dominant hand cut off in the middle of the plot, I hurt my dominant hand in the middle of writing this story. Too-specific details about the whole incident aside, I am now wondering about all the things Luke had to ask for help on and the company he kept at medical facilities during recovery...I hope to hell Leia was his waiting buddy and that Luke got to leave a lot more quickly than I did (from injury, about 8.5 hours to home).  
> Anyways, I keep wondering where the Cassian/Jyn romance is but. If I could write non-platonic multi-chapter fiction it would probably be slow burn. Working on it. I keep getting stymied by DEATH and OFFSCREEN REBELLION.


End file.
